In various cultures, ice has become a very important product for individual use. It is used to cool beverages and to keep containers and items carried therein, cool. Most people today have their own ice making capability. However, there is often a need for more ice than one can conveniently produce. Additionally, other people, most notably people working out of doors such as construction workers, yard maintenance workers, road maintenance workers, and the like, often use quantities of ice in large beverage coolers each and every day. The amount of ice used generally requires that it be purchased. Conventionally, this is accomplished by going to a location having a freezer and purchasing prepackaged bags of ice. The ice has been delivered by truck from an ice making location. The cost of this ice can be quite high, having to pay for making the ice, transporting the ice in freezer trucks and storing the ice while waiting to be sold. Each phase also includes numerous people working in the ice making facility, and delivering the ice. All of the people and equipment involved increases the cost of ice. Additionally, all of the movement can result in the ice partially melting and refreezing. This can result in clumping of cubes or ground ice reducing desirability.
Attempts at overcoming these problems have been made by using vending technology. Vending machines are well known and used for collecting money and dispensing goods. These devices have been used to sell ice for many years, overcoming some of the above problems. However, new problems of making, packaging and dispensing ice have arisen. Currently, ice vending devices that make ice are housed in trailer type structures. They include ice making devices which deposit ice in a hopper. Multiple ice moving devices are then employed to position the ice. Currently, ice must be raised to a position well above the hopper thereby providing a substantial vertical drop. This substantial vertical drop is required in current dispensing of ice. To achieve this, multiple ice moving devices are required. One device moves the ice within the hopper to an outlet, a second is positioned under the outlet to move the ice to a third ice moving device. The third ice moving device is used to move the ice upwardly to a dispensing position well above the hopper. This allows gravity to feed ice downward through packaging and delivery. Each of the steps of making, storing, and delivering ice, results in a large footprint. All of the ice moving equipment is expensive, bulky and prone to malfunction. Due to the size of the equipment, one dispensing station is provided on the outside of the structure for customer to purchase ice.
Additionally, when making ice in this manner, the device must be shut down periodically to clean and sanitize. This is expensive and prevents use of the device.